


Might I Tell the Truth?

by BlackbirdWrites



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Anne reflects on her past romances, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Carriage ride with a tryst, F/F, Intimate Moss House visit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 01:20:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21110342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackbirdWrites/pseuds/BlackbirdWrites
Summary: Through an amusing and sardonic POV, Anne Lister reflects on her troubled romantic past with a renewed focus to convince Miss Walker to become her wife.Excerpt:Miss Walker knows nothing of my self-punishing penchant for serialized dramatic torture. But that is not me anymore.  I'm ready for a tremendous life pivot: marriage.I just need her 'yes.'





	Might I Tell the Truth?

**Author's Note:**

> The story that comes before "Might I Tell the Truth?" is:  
Chapter 1. "Anne versus the Medievalists" https://archiveofourown.org/works/19946122  
Chapter 2. "Might I Tell the Truth?"  
Chapter 3. "The Thawing River -- Part One and Two" https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375259 
> 
> Please enjoy,  
Blackbird

# Might I Tell the Truth?

# 

After Miss Walker had crossed the library and seen me up-close, she had cried out, "Are you all right?" 

By a long shot, it was apparent that I wasn't, but instead of shrugging off the beating that had happened to me, I stopped myself from lying to her yet, again. With Miss Walker, my marriage hunting ground has narrowed, and in this new territory, I find I have enemies from poison pen writers to strong-armed thugs, and it's because of this collection of foes, who seem to have grown up out of the earth like mushrooms do overnight, I'm not always landing on my feet these days, and that's troubling me. 

As I try to manage the situation, meaning: how much truth to tell Miss Walker about how I came to look as frightfully as I do, I have a flash of self-awareness. Not always a good thing for a deceitful person to have. I tell myself daily that I lie to everyone because they do not, in their heart of hearts, really want to know the truth. It's as if English society has deemed truth-telling impolite, and I am along for the cover-up.

I'm just passing.

Or am I?

I feel the danger of this every time I read my journals and revisit my lovelorn past.

Four years ago, in Paris was the last time I saw Maria Barlow, with whom I had enjoyed the pleasurable tensions of a dalliance while completely denying that my plan all along had been her eventual seduction. That I am a liar, and a very good one is true. I obfuscate because I must hide until the right moment when all signs point the way. I am always ready. 

My memory holds hundreds of heart-twisting love poems, or I could try as I did with Miss Walker, to plant an erotic idea as a possibility. What would happen to her if she went into one of those places? Where people masturbate in secrecy through holes in their pockets? And once there, who knows what might happen to her? Was such a wicked place strangely appealing? It was to me. 

Each and every one of my romantic pursuits has a cunning artfulness to them, and I will say anything to an attractive lady, once she shows me promise. What is false is the image of me beguiling a gentlewoman without mercy for her morals. Stop means stop, but not necessarily full stop. There are always second chances. So it's tricky. 

During Mrs. Barlow's and my last encounter, it had become clear to me that my feverish dreams of us one day 'going to Italy' were another dead end along the road of my endless capacity for self-delusion. Also, Mariana had lured me back. Said I to myself at the time, "With her, it's madness to do this again." However, my inner warnings heed no consequence because within days I had picked up where we had last left off, and I'd dropped right back into our long-running game of 'promises never kept.' 

Once more, I lived amongst the damned. 

In December of 1831, Mariana's customary 'Happy Christmas' letter had come to me in Hastings, but she'd buried the lede: Charles' health, on the decline since November, was rapidly becoming worse. She'd hinted at soon becoming a widow and had let me know she was suspicious and quite displeased about the length of time I was spending with Miss Hobart in Hastings.

Here, along the coast, my friendship with Vere had become much more promising. Returning from a late-night stroll along the boardwalk, I'd opened the door to the music room, as a shortcut to the stairs leading up to my bed, where to my surprise, I'd found Vere sitting alone in the dark. Her hands on the keys of the piano -- not playing but sadly weeping.

When she heard me come in and cross the floor, she made no move to hide her emotions from me so, I slid next to her on the piano bench and reached up and touched a falling tear. It was then; she'd leaned against me, welcoming my arms around her while more tears fell. I'd whispered to her a confession of my own (which was false) that I too had sat alone in the dark after failing to fend off loneliness. 

"What could I do for her?" I'd asked. "Anything at all?"

I'd held her for a few minutes more until her crying had stopped. Never heard what the matter was, I'd said goodnight and continued upstairs to my room, thinking as I went: there had been a moment between us, and that was a start. 

Five days had come and gone after Christmas of 1831, and during each one of them, I had failed to keep Mariana's letter out of my mind. My anticipation of the upcoming new year of 1832, that I'd imagined filled with invigorating fresh starts, had each dream replaced by my darker expectations of Charles's impending death. At long last, there would be Charles's funeral, which I'd imagined as an overdone affair of wintery flowers and even rarer mourning. 

I certainly wouldn't. 

Next came Mariana's new year's letter describing a grim Christmas, where Charles's high fevers and accompanying medicinal purges had done little to quell his vulgar and insulting manner, but he was now in robust health, once again. 

God, help me! I am nothing if not an emotional puppet to this damnable thing! 

Being enslaved was never my envisioned trajectoria of our once-daring romance. Mariana is the woman I've waited for the longest. Twenty years of waiting, month after month, and those were the years; I remind myself when I had thought things were good.

They have devolved terribly since then, including my feelings of 'damn her' for giving me a venereal disease, which she surely did to control me sexually. In my thirties, I might add, when I was hungrier than ever before. 

I would never to her face say, unlike the unwanted criticisms she freely heaps upon me -- that her decades spent with Charles at Cheshire have made her a much less attractive person. Once, we'd had a great curiosity for each other. It's where we used to meet, engage, and stay up until dawn lovemaking to discover more. 

She ruined it.  
He ruined it.  
I ruined it.

It's over. 

But now, after Mariana, after Vere in Hastings, I'm on the other side of England where Miss Walker has stirred me up.

Successfully, ridding her of Mr. Ainsworth's pathetic rigamarole has recharged me, but things are not perfect between us, as much as I would like them to be. So I worry about her bouts of melancholia and her problems with making decisions. Moreover, who is this new medical man, Mr. Sunderland? He's suddenly appeared and oddly advising her never to walk. A quack for sure and someone Miss Parkhill has brought in, all in an effort --I'm convinced --to undermine my authority over Miss Walker. 

I cannot leave Crow's Nest for five minutes without something going awry in my absence. 

Never mind! It's why, whenever I leave, I gather thirty of my men, and we plant hundreds of trees, build two roads, and very soon a bridge. I will tell Miss Walker during our outing today, that if she can have me on top of her for hours, then weak her spine is undoubtedly not, and that she will take a walk with me tomorrow.  


Our carriage pulls up outside, and through the library door comes Miss Walker wearing a different dress and light blue hat with an impressively arching silver feather. She's smiling and calm and happy, and quite ready for our excursion. I hold her hand as she steps up into the carriage. To the driver, I say, "Take us to Shibden by the Lightcliffe Road and then south at the turn by the river."

So just like that, a whip cracks, and we are off.

"Did you know," she asks, "I used to ride in every fox hunt held in West Yorkshire?"

"Really?" I reply, trying to picture it.

"It's true. There was never a weekend when I wasn't jumping fences and racing after the hounds."

As a way of getting her out of doors and restoring her vitality, riding horses sounded very promising, as long as I wasn't supposed to do it. I parried, "In your stable, do you own the breed of horse needed for foxhunting?"

She said, "I've meant to ask. When you're unsure of yourself, you blink very fast. Have you noticed?"

I had noticed, of course. "No, I don't," I say dismissively with an eye roll, "that's ridiculous."

"No, it's not," Miss Walker insists, "it's something you do, and I rather like it in you. Makes you seem more humble, relatable."

"Hu, humble?" I stammer while trying very hard not to blink.

Miss Walker finding my answer quite amusing, begins to laugh.

I stare her down and persist. "Humble? I don't see it."

"Well, you couldn't, could you?"

"Are we arguing?" I ask as the carriage dips across a bump in the road, jostling us closer together.

"Will you admit to blinking when you're unsure and trying to make your mind up about something?"

"Depends. What does a forced confession get me?"

"If you tell the truth, something I know you'll like -- later."

"Hmm," I answer pensively before leaning in for a kiss. But just before I touch her lips with mine, Miss Walker's eyes grow wide with shock. 

"What?" I spin around to look behind me. "What's happened?"

"Right here! Is where our carriage crashed, and the boy lost his leg."

Immediately, I knock on the roof with two sharp raps, and the carriage driver slows to a stop. I fling open the door, smacking it into the footman as I jump out. 

Obsessed with questioning everyone who was there that day, I'd never come to the scene of the crime. Perhaps, I'll find evidence to advance my theory: that what happened here was not caused by 'someone' who lives far away and 'is just as likely' never to be found. 

Not if I have anything to say about it. 

As I walk to inspect a nearly six-foot-long scrape on the bridge's southern parapet, I hear behind me a series of noisy objections coming from inside the carriage. Turning around, it would appear that an impressively arched feather, bobbing in the carriage doorway, is the cause of all the fussing. When Miss Walker's head, and more of her feathered hat, pop into view. Displeasure with me written all over her face.

"It would be kind of you to act," she lowers her voice and speaks the rest to me in a whispered-tone, "more like the gentlemanly beau you assert yourself to be when we're alone together." 

I quickly clasp her hand with mine and help her down from her carriage and onto the roadway. I bend slightly at my waist and tip my hat to her. "A thousand apologies, Miss Walker, I gave no thought that you might wish to muddy-up your silken slippers and follow me down a bridge." 

"Well, I do, and it was thoughtless of you to leave me in there alone."

By now, I'm yards ahead, thrashing the brushes with my walking stick to see the ground underneath.

"Any clue what you're hoping to find?" Her next thought ends with a rather hopeless prediction. "It was more than a month ago, wasn't it?"

Hiding most of my irritation, I answer, "You could help me by looking on the opposite side and calling to me if you spot anything that's not a bush." 

Minutes pass, and I slow my pace as I walk down a small dirt road that branches off the main. Faint wheel tracks and hoof prints are all I have to follow, and I'm starting to think there's no point to my looking high and low for evidence of the gig when Miss Walker's wails cause me to abandon my hunt for clues and rush to where she's standing. With a handkerchief covering her mouth, she points down at a skeleton with patches of fur still stuck to its bones.

I look behind me to see how close the footman and driver are, and if they can see us at all. I take her trembling hands in mine and whisper between kisses to her forehead, "Ann, Ann, it's all right. That was once a small deer, and it wouldn't have hurt you when it was alive so, don't let it worry you now." 

Leading her away from the bones by the roadside, my one good eye catches a glinting of metal caught by the sunlight. I grab her hand in mine, and together we dash across the road toward the glister. Crouching down, where the end of the bridge meets the gravel roadway, I brush away the leaves to reveal a bent metal crest of golden falcons against a field of blood-red. Their outstretched talons show their aerial battle on the wing. 

There's anger in Miss Walker's voice as she reacts. "That madman! It must've been torn from his gig when he caused our accident."

"Very likely," I answer as I flip the crest over, looking for any identifying markings. Where it may have come from and who might've lost it.

"How is the boy getting on?"

"Henry," I answer, slipping the falcon crest into my pocket. "When I dropped by for visit, I may have brought him out of his shell a little."

Miss Walker answers with a suspicious sigh. "It's possible that even your enemies can't deny how charming you are."

"Kind of you to say, Miss Walker, but has it worked on you?"

She smiles and brushes my cheek with hers, whispering, "Periodically, throughout the day, I fall for it in one way or another."

"One would think charm would be a strong prophylactic against making enemies, but apparently not," I add while helping her up into the carriage.

"Very apparently," she says, settling across from me.

"Are you taking a swipe at me, again?"

Miss Walker shakes her head in disbelief, as the carriage driver calls his team forward with a giddy-up. "Never again can you lecture me on paranoia."

## # # #

An hour later, with the sky turning a menacing dark grey and looking like it could pour down buckets of rain at any second, I ask Miss Walker, "Should we circumvent our tour of my tree planting and pathways projects and make haste for the chaumiére?"

"Oh, finally! We can have our picnic," she agrees as the carriage rolls past Pickels and his men replanting hundreds of thorn trees, hazels, and laurels.

What I'd like to tell her is why I have Pickels and his men stubbing three hundred trees and replanting them to block and obliterate the scores of illegal footpaths passersby have trampled across Shibden's boundaries. Securing my perimeters is a calculated first step in the process of bringing home a wife to live with me. Once done, we will need privacy and protection, and I have many plans in preparation to accomplish just that.

Weeks ago, I had settled the matter with myself and had acknowledged my obsession to change Shibden from 'looking like an old farm,' which sets my nerves on edge at the very thought of it appearing as such, but still had wondered: when had this particular idée fixe taken over? Could it be traced back to my walk home one morning, when I realized, after staying all night and making love to her until the wee hours of the morning, that in more than one, two, and three possible ways she was the perfect lover for me? 

Every morning, as soon as I get out of her bed, she invites me right back in. She has holdings in navigation stocks that continually pump money into her accounts. Then, there's the distance issue, which is crucial for me at this time. In a matter of twenty-five minutes, I can walk from my house to hers, exchange the customary pleasantries, and within minutes she's on my lap for the afternoon. 

There is very little that I like better than a pretty woman perched on my knee. In fact, there is nothing in this world that I like better. 

Walking along the Lightcliffe Road that morning, I had dreamed her into my future and found it quite satisfying. Miss Walker would make a very nice wife, if only she would find the courage and maddeningly, she has yet to say, 'yes' to me unequivocally. I ball my right fist in anger and then tuck it under my chin to control it. 

"Anne, is everything all right?" Of course, she senses something's wrong.

"Just thinking about you," I smile at her and reach across the carriage, taking her hands and pulling her into my lap. The feather on her hat bends against the roof of the carriage and tickles her face. 

She blows at it.  
I blow at it.  
She decides to take the hat off.

"Your fancy feather has given me an idea." I paused, gauging her willingness to go along.

"Oh, no! What are you thinking up now?"

My hand reaches under her dress. My eyebrows lifting in my slyly insinuating manner, suggesting our lover's tryst could begin sooner rather than later. Not hearing a 'no' to pulling down her petticoats soon, I hear her breath catch as I slide inside her.

She moans more than a little bouncing in my lap, as the carriage bumps along. Her eyes closed, she slowly scratches me up and down my neck and pushes her lips harder onto mine for a delicious kiss. I slide my left hand inside my pocket, and through my pocket hole, I rub myself in sync with moving inside her. Her muscles are catching and rippling around my finger. She drives me more than a little crazy.

Unhinged, actually.

"You are so beautiful," I sigh between kisses when I hear a slower clopping of the horses' hooves as the team makes its final turn toward the chaumiére. 

Miss Walker hears it too.

"How long until?" She asks, worried.

Through gritted teeth, I reply, "Two minutes twenty-seconds,"

Rocking up and down against me, providing all I need to explode, she asks, "We can do it, can't we?" 

With only seconds to spare, the sought-after pulsing arc finally connects us, and I follow her over the edge. 

The carriage slows to a stop.

We share one final kiss as she slips off my lap, rearranges her petticoats, and takes her seat across from me. I straighten my scarf, and she smoothes her hands over her dress and replaces her feather hat. As I reach for the handle, Miss Walker presses her hand against the back of mine and says, "For once, Anne, just let the footman open the door for you."

I frown.

She asks, "What if you broke his nose? We'd have to go find Dr. Kenny and ..."

"You paint a vivid picture of a ruined afternoon." I lean back in my seat, feeling satisfied. "That was nice just now, wasn't it?"

"Wasn't it just?" 

Once alighted, I swing our picnic basket between us. Miss Walker tucks away a lock of hair that's strayed from under her hat. As my hand turns the doorknob, all I can think about doing next is plucking the fancy feather from her hat and teasing her into orgasm with it. 

I turn around and call across the garden to her groom, William Bell. "We never went to the accident site today, did we?"

"We've never been there, no ma'am." He nods his understanding of our secret.

"So I want you to drive up to Shibden and get something to eat and have a nice cup of tea. And you and the footman feed and water the horses. John Booth will show where. And, very importantly, you're to tell both Booth and Cordingly that Miss Lister and Miss Walker will be returning to Shibden by foot and to expect us at six."

"But Miss Lister," William points to the ever-darkening sky and predicts, "it might be storming by then."

"If that's the case, and you haven't seen me by six, then, come and find me."

"Yes, Miss Lister." He clucks giddy-up to the horses, and Miss Walker's carriage drives away.

Noting the time as 4 p.m., I close my pocket watch and enter the chaumiére, where Miss Walker is laying out our picnic. "Strangest thing," she says, "once you found that falcon crest, the bruising on your face began to lighten, and even your eye isn't so red anymore." 

"Really? Are you sure it's not the aftereffect of our, you know ...in the carriage just now?" Waiting for her answer, I pull off my gloves and stretch my right hand in front of me. Closing my right eye and then my left, I compare their vision. "I count seven fingers instead of five, not sure what to make of that."

"How many were there this morning?"

"Oh," I pop a grape into my mouth, courtesy of Miss Walker's picnic, nonchalantly answering while chewing, "At least nine." 

## # # #

After finishing our smoked chicken sandwiches, we sipped wine, watched the fire, and listened to the rain beat against the windows. I felt as if I could fall dead asleep at any moment; I was so content. Instead, I asked, "I'm curious about the note you left for Miss Parkhill explaining your absence."

"It was a short one." Miss Walker confesses with a grin.

"Yes, so I would imagine. Go on."

"Dear Miss Parkhill, I hope that you have a good book to amuse you because I have gone out and will not be back in time for dinner."

"Very good! Your writing is improving, but I do wonder though how it is that your Aunt Ann can invite Miss Parkhill to come to you for a whole month? What kind of arrangement is that?"

A scowl clouds Miss Walker's face. "In some ways, it must be my fault."

"How?"

"Years of not standing up to any of them. They tell me what to do and then snoop around a week later to see if I am following their suggestions."

"Hmm, that wouldn't do for me. You need to tell them to stop."

"Oh, do I?" Miss Walker blurts out, nearly spilling her wine. "Who would they blame for my sudden turnabout?" She points at me. "You!"

I brush her off. "I would make them feel utterly ridiculous if they ever confronted me." I slip out from behind her lying against my shoulder and toss a few logs on the fire. "And not a one has the nerve to do it."

"You would be right, if only you realized the tribe fights as a pack. It's never just one. You'd have to fight them all." For a moment, Miss Walker appears eager to level her familial playing field and launch a scheme to take them on, but she buckles. "It would be so tempting to set you loose on them, but I know I'll never ask."

"Why?"

"Their low opinions of me, maybe? I've come to believe them myself." A nervousness radiates from her as she says, "I don't know exactly. I don't know why."

To bring her back from the edge of sounding desperate, I whisper, "You need to come and live with me at Shibden. Its walls have held off invaders for four hundred years. They can withstand your tribe of relations hurling what? Insults! Complaints? I welcome it. It would be amusing."

"It would make the papers." Miss Walker begins to laugh at the ridiculous picture.

"You know you're not the only one who has a difficult family. You've met Marian, my younger sister? We could unleash her on your medievalist family. She has a pulverizing quality embedded in her personality." I add grimly. 

I play out a few scenarios in my head. Every one of them that involves Marian backfires. I backtrack with Miss Walker. "Or I could hire a man to throw a box of rats into each of their kitchens."

"Anne! Tell me you'd never order such a thing!"

Lying is so easy for me. "Of course, not! I'm playing with you. It's called in French an 'expérience de pensée --a thought experiment.

"Meaning what?" Miss Walker appears puzzled, but no longer considers me dangerous or planning cruelties against her family.

I rejoin her on the couch and wrap my arms around her. As we were before, she leans back against me. "Allow me to explain some of the trouble in my own family." I take out my pocket watch and check the time."It's just now five-ten. In ninety minutes, Marian will have me captive at the table. Watch the fights she picks to goad me into paying attention to her."

"She seemed perfectly fine the afternoon I met her."

"Because you are exactly the type of lady she likes, whereas, I am decidedly not." 

I take the glass of wine from her hand and kneel by the sofa. "Let's talk about something else, very different." I unclasp her belt and pull it free from her waist. Moving my lips in bursts of kisses up her body, the soft silk of her dress sliding upwards with every move I make, I reach her lips, where timidly at first, her tongue slides next to mine, and her hands grip my shoulders.

Under her dress, I feel the knot that holds her petticoats, and I pull it free. Finding no objection from her, I slide them over her slippers and drop them onto the floor where they disappear ...to be looked for much later. 

One layer left, her drawers, and from experience a simple knot to pull, but I wait, pressing against the fabric that's barely separating us, waiting until her desire for me overtakes her. We kiss over and over. She holds my face in her hands and says she loves me. I toss my vest somewhere on the other side of the couch and think about the words, 'I love you' that she just said, and how they are nice to hear, but I don't easily say them anymore. Not until I've found a woman who will never tie my future happiness to morbidity and play games with me like 'when Charles dies.'

Miss Walker knows nothing of my self-punishing penchant for serialized dramatic torture. ^2~4=\5~_32\7_5f3 =24o4~5_7=3fu.

That is not me anymore. I'm ready for a tremendous life pivot: marriage. 

I must have her 'yes.'

In the meantime ...held in my teeth is the string of the last knot, and it slips free. I look into Ann's eyes in this sweet moment we share. There's her aching for me, her loneliness, and something else I've yet to understand. I look lovingly at her. Her fingers play up my neck and across my jawline as she lowers my head to within inches of where she wants my loving attention. 

She asks, "How can I not say yes to you when you love me this way?"

## Shibden -- 6 p.m. 

We arrive at Shibden a little bit wetter than either of us would like, but very soon, our damp coats and hats are off, and we're by fire in the sitting room with my aunt. It is no secret to me that when I come home from Miss Walker's, she and Marian titter amongst themselves that I've been off visiting 'my little friend' -- again. Tonight, we'll see how Ann stands up to ladies of Shibden.

To be continued...


End file.
